B.C. liquor stores allowed to charge for samples

If you’re hesitating to buy a pricey bottle of liquor you’ve never tried, the B.C. government has stepped in with a taste-test solution.

The province is now allowing establishments to sell liquor samples, and has increased the available sample size to give customers a better sense of what they may want to buy.

The rules allow liquor and wine stores to charge for larger samples in an effort to recover the costs.

John Yap, the parliamentary secretary for liquor policy reform, says the changes are an important step in modernizing provincial liquor laws in a way that makes sense for consumers, retailers and manufacturers.

Instead of a sip, retailers can now sell a sample size up to 75 millilitres of wine, about one-third of a glass, or 175 millilitres of beer and 20 millilitres of hard liquor.

Trent Anderson, who heads a company that sells wine, says the changes give customers a chance to sample terrific new wines that would normally be too expensive to open.